Oxygen absorbers come in a (10) count plastic bag. Once that bag is open, and say I use (2), can I store the rest in a ziplock bag? How long will they last that way, Don't want to waste them and I don't want to spend the money to fill 10 buckets at time. Any suggestions?
Ziplock bags are not an oxygen barrier so the absorbers will pull oxygen in and spend themselves absorbing it. :xeye:
I store my unused ones in a small mylar bag but I realize not everyone orders the little bags. The other option that works is to store them in the smallest size jar with a tight lid that you have. After you put the O2 absorbers in the jar, fill it with rice (to minimize the air in the jar) and tighten the lid down. They will usually store a few months that way.
That's what I do, except you don't need to vacuum seal them. Just press out all the air you can, and seal them up. The tiny amount of air left is only 21 percent oxygen, which is not going to materially influence the remaining capacity of the absorbers.
You can make small mylar bags from larger ones. Just seal up the sides.
To add to Mels post, the absorbers in a zip lock would last about an hour.
I have found that the best way to save them is to put them in a canning jar and evacuate it with a Food Saver. In other words, draw a vacuum on them.
That being said, I do not use the absorbers any more for just the reasons you stated. I have gone to vacuum packing everything in canning jars. Things will last a long time when you do that. I have some hot (you set fire to them) tire tube patches that I keep in an evacuated jar that must be 30 years old. They still work well, used one the other day.
As a side note, I use 1/2 gallon jars and when I have a LARGE amount of stuff to put up, I use my air compressor (yep, air compressor) to evacuate the jars. I did a very small modification to my air compressor and use it as a vacuum pump (it also works as a vacuum bleeder for car brakes).
The only problem with using the air compressor is that it will draw such a vacuum that you can't get the lids off when you want to use the stuff. You must stop vacuuming before it reaches that point, you get to where you know from the sound when to stop. I suppose you could also put a vacuum gage on it if you really wanted to get fancy.
I have tried using the vacuum sealer with canning jars. I have had nuts go rancid with the vaccum method. Nuts stored at the same time with O2 absorbers are still good after four years.
10 count bag? ... 2000cc size? .... 1000cc? .... sounds like you are doing a single bucket or two .... you know there's very rarely that much urgency involved that an immediate bucket pack is necessary ...
if you wish you can also vac and re-seal the factory bag ...
Vacuum sealing removes some air but does not reduce the oxygen percentage. The remaining air is still 21% oxygen. Oxygen is the problem with the air as far as food storage goes. Oxygen absorbers with appropriate packaging reduce the remaining air down to less than 1% normally. Vacuum sealing is not necessary with oxygen absorbers and can actually be counter-productive in some packaging scenarios.
So vacuum sealing seems to be a great method but you don't find any professional companies using nothing but vacuum sealing for long term storage and you don't find any recommendations to do so. It simply doesn't provide an appropriate environment for the food storage.
I was wondering how meat frozen in mylar bags be better than vac sealed?
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